Net at Home

Ok, i've avoided getting the net at home coz i'm lazy and i take advantage of my work lightning connection etc.

I'm not a gamer and would problem only use for internet and occasionally work (well, probably never!). Carphone warehouse have a couple specials, but one caught my eye, was the 'free' hp laptop with AOL wireless from £19.99 (£15 del charge). i know i could probably piece stuff together and get better deals, but not hugely tech savvy. opinions on special?
http://shop.carphonewarehouse.com/aol_eligibility.php

its a 24 month contract...thats a long time.

I'd avoid Carphone Warehouse if poss, they are a nightmare if anything goes wrong...
I'm in the same position as you and mates have told me to go with the big boys like BT, Sky or Tiscali... More expensive but a reliable service and less time on the blower to customer services...
I'd be interested to hear what ISPs people on here use before I get one too...

sort of in the same boat at my house.on bt at the mo but its a shit deal with a slow connection...im going to have to convince my house mates that an upgrade is needed

zen expensive but worth it. avoid pus.net they are the biggest bunch of tossers out there, had a right nightmare with them involving oftel and many hours spent in a queue to customer services and many months of poor service.

we tried sky, couldn't get it working for 2-3 months, they blamed all sorts of stuff. Switched over to BT, 2 days and we were online. Decent speeds too

I think it's well worth the extra money, being used to / dependent on having a connection and then suddenly not having it sucks

I have been trying to connect with sky and they have been a nightmare.
Every time their ad comes on TV about how easy it all is I cry.

£120 to install and new BT line! Wankers.

virgin have served me well. There's a bunch of different options, but I have wireless down the phone line for £19.99 a month, 12 month contract. Very good customer service line for muppets like me who need their hand held while setting up stuff like this.

dogs: i'd avoid AOL at all costs. trying to leave them is like leaving the mafia.

i'd been happy with my virgin broadband but most companies now don't require a BT line, which is good.

I've been with BT for 5 years now, only had about 2 hours of downtime. Their helpline is in SE Asia and not very good, but I have only needed to call twice...

They are expensive, but all the other ISPs (excluding Cable providers) get all their bandwidth from BT exchanges.

Pricey, but worth it imho.

orange is pretty good, decent speeds (avg download - 650 - 800 kbps) cheapish too.

B Broadband was reccomended to me by my tech geek mate. Said really fast. Was on Pipex for two years at my last place, pretty good.

Here we go:
http://www.be-broadband.info/

If you've got an Orange mobile, you can get great deals with them

I've got BT and I'd echo what everybody else says. They're not the cheapest, but my conneciton works - all the time - and it's fast. We considered changing to one of the cheaper Sky/Orange deals, but it's more important for us to have a connection that doesn't go down.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ekIIvfyfD8

i used to rate zen. had them years ago and they were awesome. Rejoined recently but canceled cos of connection drops and slow speeds and usage limits.

Switched to o2 seamlessly.. 2hr downtime. £10 a month, full 8mb, no limit or fairusage policy.

Absolutely amazed, and their customer service is good. not up to par with zen's, but for a third of the price imo its worth it.

o2 is basicly be but cheaper.

Another vote for virgin, never had a problem with them at all (crossing fingers now)

be is good yes.
abysmal customer service tho. not to mention ongoing DNS problems... and malfunctioning transparent proxys too.

im with sky. only £15 with skytv. some probs at the start, but it was actually the phoneline in the street that was fkd (only one of either the phone or broadband working at any one time)...bt sorted it out after about a week, no cost to me. no probs since. customer service is pretty good so far.

loads of mobile ones out there, but you need to have good reception. mate went with 3, only to find out that he needs to go outside his flat for the receiver to work.

I use plus.net who are pretty cheap. I use them for all calls and stuff too, works out a good deal and means only one bill. They have unlimited downloads so if you have a clever Mac which can turn itself on and off during the free period then you can use it for torrents etc without much implication for your usage allowance (which is pretty high anyway). They seem pretty fast to me too, not used it for games.

If you can get cable get cable, otherwise if you are force onto a phone line like most don't get bulldog or AOL.

wYs i used to rate zen. had them years ago and they were awesome. Rejoined recently but canceled cos of connection drops and slow speeds and usage limits.

Switched to o2 seamlessly.. 2hr downtime. £10 a month, full 8mb, no limit or fairusage policy.

Absolutely amazed, and their customer service is good. not up to par with zen's, but for a third of the price imo its worth it.

o2 is basicly be but cheaper.

Hmmm, my flatmate's about to move his phone contract to o2, broadband deals for their customers are crazy cheap... But it must be too good to be true!?!
Will have to investigate further if they're as good as you say...

o2 must have already used up the 2 hours of downtime :D

Hovis Brown dogs: i'd avoid AOL at all costs. trying to leave them is like leaving the mafia.

i'd been happy with my virgin broadband but most companies now don't require a BT line, which is good.

cool. mmm, back to no internet then at home.

If you want to take the time to compare, trawl the boards etc. This site is good.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/